SisterLeaks

It was January 4 by the time editor Kenjiro Toki and GF Bunko editor in chief Satoshi Godo came to Itsuki’s apartment to apologize.

Word of the All About My Little Sister anime leaked out once an image of the special-edition Volume 5 with drama CD was uploaded on the Net, complete with “Anime Coming Soon!” on the front of the box. It turned out, however, that the image came from Gift Publishing’s official website. This wasn’t unheard of. Other series had their anime plans leaked thanks to an erroneous update on a shopping site, or notices provided to bookstores, or a picture of the new novel volume from someone at a print shop or distributor. Messing up the timing of an announcement had happened many times before, but having the publisher itself be at fault was rare.

Gift Publishing’s website was set up such that it updated on the first of each month with images of all the new titles due for release that month. If the obi belt of these publications contained confidential info—for example, an anime announcement—the image uploads were embargoed, or delayed until a certain date. Each editorial department was contacted to ascertain which day new titles could be uploaded—that’s what was in the sheaf of papers Miyako asked Toki to check on Christmas Eve. It was the job of a novelist’s editor and the EIC to perform these checks, but Toki accidently checked the “No Embargo” box for the special edition of Volume 5, and Godo didn’t notice.

That was why news of the anime came out earlier than expected. It was 100 percent a careless human error.

Once he saw the news on the Net, Itsuki promptly called up Toki. He didn’t have any idea why it happened, either, so he tried to get someone from the company on the line, but since it was New Year’s Day, the web administrator was offline.

It wasn’t until the afternoon of the third that they figured out what had happened, and in the meantime, the image of the box set stayed on the website, proclaiming the news far and wide.

“Goddammit… Can’t you save your leaking for the bathroom…?”

Hearing this explanation from Toki and Godo left Itsuki beyond peeved. There were dark shadows under his eyes; he hadn’t slept much in the past three days.

Toki closed his eyes and meekly lowered his head.

“…I truly apologize about this.”

“This was completely our fault,” Godo continued. “My apologies, Mr. Hashima.”

Itsuki greeted the polite apologies with an awkward sigh.

“Haahhh… Well, not much we can do about it now. The readers seem excited about it, at least…”

Itsuki had kept probing the Net after contacting Toki about the leak, but a lot of the initial reaction was positive. “I’m so happy about the AAMLS anime!” “I love the novels, so I can’t wait!” “An anime for all that nudity? Awesome!” “Congrats to Hashima!” “I’ve followed Itsuki Hashima since his debut, and seeing him get an anime honestly means so much to me.”

There was, of course, the usual bullshit from people who hadn’t even read the novels—“Another stupid light novel anime?”; “I haven’t read it, but I’m sure it’s garbage”; “Little sister tropes are so gross.” Some people voiced concern—“An adaptation of a GF Bunko series? Hopefully this doesn’t turn out like Chevalier of the Absolute World”; “I’m looking forward to it, but I hope it doesn’t trigger a bunch of haters online”—while others, like the guy who wrote “Stop making manga and anime that bother me. This is a violation of my privacy,” were on their own wavelength entirely.

“Y-yeah!” shouted Toki, latching on to Itsuki’s observation. “The fans are all really happy for you!”

But Itsuki winced at this. “No kidding. They’re so innocently happy for me, having no idea how I feel about it. It’s so cute of them. Seriously… I love them all. And that’s why…!”

He gritted his teeth, making fists with both hands.

“…That’s why I wanted to relay the news to them the right way. The way we prepared with all our hearts. Not in this half-assed way!”

“…………”

Toki could do nothing but sit there silently as Itsuki’s countenance darkened once more.

After Toki and Godo left Itsuki’s apartment, they marched straight over to the anime production company. There they were guided to a meeting room, where they waited awhile before All About My Little Sister director Munenori Tarui and producer Tsutomu Oshima came in. Tarui was his usual easygoing self, but Oshima was clearly disturbed.

“…We’re truly sorry about this situation.”

They had already explained matters in detail over e-mail, so Godo went straight into an apology, bowing his head low.

“Haahhh…”

Oshima sighed loudly, making sure everyone heard him.

“We really didn’t want to deal with this… We had a lot of plans in motion that are no good anymore.”

“…I understand your anger. I’m very sorry for this.”

Oshima snorted at Toki’s apology. “…Do you really, though? Do you understand what kind of concrete damage comes from leaks like this?”

“Concrete?” Toki parroted back.

“…Well, obviously, it costs money to create an official anime website. These sites generally get the most attention right after an anime’s announced, so if word leaks out before its launch, it’s that much harder to guide people to this site we’re spending money to produce. With news sites and magazines, too, we have to work with a lot of different companies and spend money getting everything organized, but now that kind of precious information is just gonna be used by affiliate news sites to make a little cash. You have hundreds, if not thousands, of these bots tweeting and retweeting URLs to their own affiliates—the official website doesn’t even figure into it. They’re attracting potential customers who’d normally be going to either our site or that of a legitimate news source. And there’s nothing more frustrating for a producer to deal with.”

Oshima calmly laid out the facts, but there was anger between the lines.

News aggregator sites, called matome sites in Japanese, are web pages that collate and summarize threads posted on Twitter, 2chan, and other forums and social media, presenting them in an easy-to-read format to readers and making money from web advertising. The most successful sites are said to rake in over twenty million yen in ad revenue a year. However, unlike legit news sites with links to publishers and anime companies, affiliate sites publish pretty much whatever they want, even fabricated stories and information obtained illegally—as long as the page views keep coming, anything is fair game, leading some sites to craft sensationalist headlines to draw reader attention. The entertainment industry strongly resents them for this, treating them as a cancer infiltrating their business; they’ve experimented as of late with launching court cases against some of the more egregious examples.

“I… I am truly sorry.”

All Toki could do was repeat himself in a scratchy voice. One of a producer’s most important roles was to organize and execute an advertising campaign. Toki’s error not only got in the way of this; it provided material support to what the industry saw as its mortal enemies.

“…Haahhh…”

Oshima let out another long sigh.

“Well,” Tarui interrupted with a gentle smile, “there’s no taking it back now. It’s not like this is the first leak in anime history… You see things go awry thanks to external elements all the time.”

“…If you put it that way,” Oshima said with another awkward sigh, “I can’t really rake them over the coals about this, either.”

Toki looked a bit relieved—but then Tarui fixed his eyes upon him. “But just because it happens all the time, I want to be sure you don’t think we in the front lines aren’t affected by it at all.”

His manner of speech was kind and engaging, but his words had real force—a penetrating coldness.

“…I will keep that in mind,” Toki said, bowing his head again.

Once they were done with the anime people, Toki returned to the editorial office in the evening, draping himself over his chair and sighing to himself before turning on his computer.

It was his first serious mistake in a long time, and he honestly felt sorry for Itsuki and the anime staff. He regretted all of it, and he wanted to make a permanent mental shift so this never happened again in his work. Such were his thoughts as he opened his e-mail, only to find a reply from Hoshiimo, the illustrator for All About. He had been part of the morning’s e-mail chain apologizing for the leak, so he must’ve replied to that.

Toki opened the message. The full body of it was as follows:

I’m sorry. My heart is broken. I can’t draw anymore.

“…………Are you…serious………?”

At the age of twenty-seven, Kenjiro Toki had just shat the bed—and he’d be cleaning it up for a while to come.